Here’s a strange twist: the creators decided to revive the single most annoying character of the first season. Okay.
This isn’t a bad thing per se, it’s all going to depend on how the creators handle her. Ichi wasn’t necessarily bad, she just got on my nerves due to the poor balancing of the first season, combined with the fact that she DIDN’T DO ANYTHING. She was really being set up as the useless character here, which was really obnoxious considering the huge amount of screen-time she received.
HOWEVER, this is where the character-development kicks in. In the first season, she had plenty of reasons to be useless. With all of those reasons dead now, she’s bound to be different here, and she’s bound to evolve, especially when the creators went through such trouble bringing her back to life (or rather, making use of the fact that her death wasn’t 100% confirmed. Make sure that this is the last time that you pull this, series!). I mean, that haunting scene in which this series shortly changed into a horror atmosphere was really good!
Also, while this is the typical time-slot for big budgeted action series, It still is great to see that we can have episodes like this, with long dialogues that intend to build up this atmosphere and the action, making sure that it’s as interesting as possible, rather than a bunch of random endless action scenes. The dialogue here works because of this build-up, as it’s able to keep in this atmosphere of the series.
Meanwhile, Toyotomi, I like him much better as a villain than the demon lord of the first season. The latter, while really badass, only had one gimmick, and apart from that he just sat on his chair, being evil throughout most of the series. Toyotomi actually does stuff, he has a past, and he isn’t as outrageously evil either. That scene in which he spared Date Masamune may have been a bit cliche, but it did show that this isn’t really a fight between good and evil, but instead it’s just a complete chaos in which many different parties with the same goals are trying to create peace while getting as much power to themselves as possible.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
